Love Southampton Food Report

the Mount Pleasant industrial estate. However, this adds more time in collecting
and transferring items from the freezers and makes organisation and planning
more difficult. At the same time The Big Difference has grown to the point where
they could support more projects if they had the space to store more food. With
more storage and with freezers located onsite The Big Difference could increase
the amount of food given to projects, do it more efficiently and save time, and
reduce the cost of going between two locations. The increase in storage size
would also result in the need for more volunteers to be trained in order to cope
with the increased number of food quantities that are collected.
Great attention is given to food safety standards to ensure that the food being
given out is safe to eat. This is of particular importance given that the food being
redistributed is often close to its expiry date. A food toolkit provided by
Southampton City Mission is displayed clearly in the storage facilities. Food
parcels are hand-packed with equal quantities of food for each of the recipients.
Although this increases the amount of input with regards to volunteer hours,
bags, and electricity needed in the warehouses, it ensures that people are
receiving a fair service with equal amounts of food and that the food is able to
feed more people when portioned.
The Big Difference has been intentional in storing a reserve of food that would
enable them to keep providing food if any shocks or interruptions in the supply
chain were to happen. This is achieved by redistributing the fresh food (which
often has a shorter expiry date) and keeping stocks of long dated food.
Pre-planning in this way can mitigate the challenges of having to source the food
needed for each week within the same week, but having reserves allows time to
adapt and adjust without leaving partners and projects lacking supplies.
It requires more than just logistics and space. The people involved are vital to
the process. Both The Big Difference and Southampton City Mission have small
staff teams on a mixture of full time and part time contracts and work with over
180 volunteers between them. The volunteers come from communities all over
Southampton, with many from churches. They drive the vans that move the food,
engage in admin tasks, prepare food parcels, store and record the food, and serve
and speak with clients and service users.
Without the ongoing dedication and hard work of the teams the reach and impact
would be greatly reduced. It is important to note also that a lot of work was put in
to lay the foundations of these projects whilst they became established. Many of
the projects were started by church members responding to the need who put in
long hours to form the relationships and partnerships before reaching the stage
where means of funding were available. One project leader shared how they had
been volunteering six days a week, with only nine days of annual leave taken over
a period of three years, demonstrating the passion and commitment with which
volunteers serve their communities whilst highlighting the potential risks for both
the charities when key people are unable to continue, in addition to the wellbeing
of those volunteers.
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